Ran across this curiosity today: Microsoft Edge Dev Center provides a bunch of ready made virtual machines with different versions of IE web browser. But they can be used for different purposes if you need to quickly spin up a specific version of Windows quickly.

VMWare stores the configs, and files on the UNIX file system, which you have to edit by hand. You can’t do this in the UI, as VMWare tries to be SCSI only. But if you manually edit the files, you too can enjoy a virtual IDE disk.

You need to enable SSH access to the ESX server, or do this change on the console. Configs live in:

I’ve always liked Virtual PC, and it was a shame IMHO when Microsoft twisted this fantastic utility in some glorified IE6 box, A’la “Windows XP Mode” for Windows 7.

So I downloaded and installed VMWare Player, as I’ve heard you can use it to run ESX among other things requiring hardware acceleration, and player fits the bill for being cheap.

Passing the hardware acceleration to a child VM is a matter of checking a single box in the settings. Namely the ‘Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI” box. Although you don’t have to click it if you want, it just offers greater performance.

VMWare Player

Now I installed my old copy of XP x64, as I felt like something different, then I went ahead and installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 sp1. The installation was pretty uneventful.

Now with that out of the way, I could setup a VM,and I decided to install OS/2 1.21 for the heck of it.

Virtual PC running OS/2 1.21 without hardware acceleration

And it booted up no problems, like it did back in the XP days. I even ran it with and without CPU acceleration and it works on both, but is noticeably faster with acceleration.

With Intel-VT acceleration

So I thought this was interesting, although Virtual PC has been essentially dead ended, it can go on with an older OS in a VM, to let you run VMs.

I would imagine that if VMWare Player could run Virtual PC 2007, that 2004 should work as well.